When we hear things like bromide mixed with chlorine creates halomethanes (carcinogens) in the water treated at sewage treatment plants , subsequently released into our drinking water sources, for some , even the moderates that=disaster.

2. what comes from the frackwater treatment plant is the bromide, i.e. a type of salt. It's already naturally present in the water despite frackwater discharge, though the discharge surely raises its concentration considerably.

3. The chlorine is supplied by the drinking water purification, and not present until that point. Yes, chlorine is put in your drinking water, thats how they kill all the bacteria and stuff. It is only then that the halomethanes can form, only if there is the presence of hydrocarbons (which there are, but I don't know how much at that point).

Halomethanes are carcinogens. We are exposed to hundreds if not thousands of carcinogens every day. I haven't seen any studies of the severity of these particular ones compared to others, so I'll refrain from comment on that. But seeing that we could be exposed to a carcinogen, while it doesn't make me happy, if I counted that as a disaster then my daily life is full of one disaster after another.

Plus, you missed my point. I don't want to see increased halomethanes in my drinking water any more than you do. Yes, this is a danger, one to keep an eye on. But this article is basically in response to a change in the law. This change won't reduce the amount of halomethanes that have been in our drinking water for decades, but it will prevent an INCREASE in the concentration of them. While we can still wish more was done, isn't a control put in place to keep things from getting worse a good thing? I just don't understand the outrage? We weren't outraged before. Now we put controls on the gas industry in place to make sure our water supply doesn't get worse than it already is, and we get outraged at it? Wasn't this a measured "win"?

BTW, does anyone know if their are any new treatment plants being built specifically to handle frack water? You would think if some $$$ could be made treating the frack water a few state of the art plants would be in the works.

I don't know of any specifically, but this article is in response to a law which states that new frackwater treatment facilities will NOT be able to discharge into waterways, while the older plants that have been doing this for years will be grandfathered and allowed to continue what they're doing. That suggests to me that at least there's some people who think new ones will be built to handle the higher volumes of M shale. The plants that are running have been in operation for some time to treat the frack water from traditional vertical shallow wells.

I definitely agree with you. My understanding is that the current plants do a fine job with the heavy metals and such, but do a poor job with the salts. If we are capable of building plants that better handle the salts, then we should do that, and shut down the old plants that do a worse job. The danger with what we did was that it may discourage the new, better plants from being built, and encourage increased use of the older, dirtier facilities.

Make the regulation based on the cleanliness of the outflow. You then encourage the building of newer, better plants, and make sure they are up to snuff and that the builder's don't skrimp on $ and design them for dirtier discharge. For the old plants, you either force them to upgrade or shut them down, at the very least you discourage much volume from going through them. That should result in cleaner water, rather than just trying to ensure an existing problem doesn't get worse.

Unless i'm mistaken which i could be , there are no frackwater treatment plants , they use existing sewage treatment plants to treat the frackwater and they don't do a thorough job. There is a device that evaporates the leftover water but it's patent pending i beleive. out west the water left in the pits naturally evaporates due to the weather conditions but here that doesn't happen , what happens is we get one of our famous flash floods and the water ends up in the nearest creek.

Typically they are the same locations as sewage treatment facilities, but have extra processes to handle the frackwater (albeit still unsufficient IMO). So frackwater treatment facilities are likely to also be sewage treatment facilities. But only a few sewage treatment facilities are capable of being frackwater treatment facilities.

Frackwater is not new to the state, the same stuff has been processed for years from the shallow gas wells. So we do have a few plants who historically have treated the stuff. The difference is volume. Those few plants do a fine job with many contaminates, but because they had a much smaller treated frackwater outflow, they were less concerned with salts. Just not enough salty water going out to effect the big rivers, so they didn't worry about it. Dilution is fine for salts. Now, the demand has increased considerably, and we have some problems. 1. There's just not enough capacity to handle it. and 2. If we increase the capacity without increasing the requirements on the salts, then the much higher volume of salty outflow is much more of a problem. Not enough dilution to handle the problem anymore.

I think I read recently that there are 6 facilities in the state which treat frackwater, and 12 permits for new, dedicated and higher tech treatment facilities. I can't find that reference now and don't know how old it is, so the numbers may have changed, some of the permits may have been accepted or unaccepted, etc.

I'm saying we should do everything we can to make sure the new ones are up to snuff. And then encourage their use over the old ones, or force the old ones to upgrade.

It's a business of sorts. I've no clue what they're profit margins are like, or if its currently just subsidizing a public works. But gas drillers do pay so much per gallon to have the water treated, and my understanding is that new plants would be a for-profit business.

I am all about "for profit" wastewater treatment plants. I suspect most now are public works. Just goes to show again how we are getting ahead of ourselves by having to use our sewage treatment plants to process frac water. All frac water should be processed at a plant designated for frac water only! Then instead of dumping the treated water back into our water supply the gas companies could come back and pick it up to use again. If it is safe enough to dump back into our water supply it surely can be used over in the drilling process right?

Two years ago someone should have stood up and asked these mindless questions like. How do we treat the water? Do we have enough facilities to treat the water? If we use our exsisting facilities can they treat the water properly, and won't the treated water be put back in our water supply? Nope, instead they said go ahead and drill we will figure out the rest as we go along. Mind blowing!!!!!!!!

Then instead of dumping the treated water back into our water supply the gas companies could come back and pick it up to use again.

By and large they do exactly that. I don't know the details, but I think it has to do with how far away the treatment plant is. If its just down the road, great. If its 200 miles away, then you have not only the cost issues of transporting it again, but also concerns about using roadways more than necessary, extra use of oil, extra traffic, etc. Traffic and road degradation are one of the very real problems with M shale drilling. To pick it up, you essentially need a massive convoy of huge tanker trucks who are going to drive to some small town en masse, and then return fully loaded to a rural location over country roads and bridges. They gotta do this at least once to deliver the water, but making it happen twice doubles the volume of this traffic.

Then instead of dumping the treated water back into our water supply the gas companies could come back and pick it up to use again.

By and large they do exactly that. I don't know the details, but I think it has to do with how far away the treatment plant is. If its just down the road, great. If its 200 miles away, then you have not only the cost issues of transporting it again, but also concerns about using roadways more than necessary, extra use of oil, extra traffic, etc. Traffic and road degradation are one of the very real problems with M shale drilling. To pick it up, you essentially need a massive convoy of huge tanker trucks who are going to drive to some small town en masse, and then return fully loaded to a rural location over country roads and bridges. They gotta do this at least once to deliver the water, but making it happen twice doubles the volume of this traffic.

By and large? I am not so sure about that. If the gas company can take an unlimited supply of H2O from any water source (they can depending where they are in the state) for fracking and they can drop off the used water at a treatment plant and be done with it..... Why would they want to re-use it? Just gonna take away from their bottom line. I for one would pick the lesser of the 2 evils and have them build centralized treatment facilities. Of course while they were wrecking our roads they would also have to pay to fix them. If traffic is a problem I would restrict at what times and how many of their trucks could be on the road. All this should have been done years ago before the M Shale got going. Of course if we did this now we could slow things down and get a handle on things. Don't worry the gas companies aren't going anywhere. It will cut into their profit but they will still make billions before it is all said and done. The only thing I care about is at what expense to the environment and our kids future?

Looking into it further, what is being re-used to a high degree is the fluid before being sent to the treatment facilities. It may be used multiple times before being sent off for treatment. The reason is to save cost on trucking it, and to reuse the waste. The very article that started this thread has a section on it:Quote:

Cabot, which produced nearly 370,000 barrels of waste in the period examined by the AP, said that since the spring it has been reusing 100% of its well water in new drilling operations, rather than shipping it to treatment plants

Quote:

All 10 of the biggest drillers in the state say they have either eliminated discharges in the past few months, or reduced them to a small fraction of what they were a year ago.

Quote:

The biggest driller, Atlas Resources, which produced nearly 2.3 million barrels of wastewater in the review period, said it is now recycling all water produced by wells in their first 30 days of operation, when the flowback is the heaviest. Half of the rest is now sent to treatment plants.

Then instead of dumping the treated water back into our water supply the gas companies could come back and pick it up to use again.

By and large they do exactly that. I don't know the details, but I think it has to do with how far away the treatment plant is. If its just down the road, great. If its 200 miles away, then you have not only the cost issues of transporting it again, but also concerns about using roadways more than necessary, extra use of oil, extra traffic, etc. Traffic and road degradation are one of the very real problems with M shale drilling. To pick it up, you essentially need a massive convoy of huge tanker trucks who are going to drive to some small town en masse, and then return fully loaded to a rural location over country roads and bridges. They gotta do this at least once to deliver the water, but making it happen twice doubles the volume of this traffic.

By and large? Isn't Pennsylvania's leadership currently too stupid to require injection wells to reuse the water? That's something I got from the article.

pcray1231 wrote:Looking into it further, what is being re-used to a high degree is the fluid before being sent to the treatment facilities. It may be used multiple times before being sent off for treatment. The reason is to save cost on trucking it, and to reuse the waste. The very article that started this thread has a section on it:Quote:

Cabot, which produced nearly 370,000 barrels of waste in the period examined by the AP, said that since the spring it has been reusing 100% of its well water in new drilling operations, rather than shipping it to treatment plants

Quote:

All 10 of the biggest drillers in the state say they have either eliminated discharges in the past few months, or reduced them to a small fraction of what they were a year ago.

Quote:

The biggest driller, Atlas Resources, which produced nearly 2.3 million barrels of wastewater in the review period, said it is now recycling all water produced by wells in their first 30 days of operation, when the flowback is the heaviest. Half of the rest is now sent to treatment plants.

Quote:

"The new rules, so far, appear to be working," he said

Well if that's the case then we are all good But with the lack of oversight who the hell knows??? Should we take them for their word?

From what I understand the re-used water is only good for a few uses before it must be treated. It is where it goes from there that is concerning. Does the treated water go back to the companies to re-use or into our water supply? Answer back into our water supply!

Well if that's the case then we are all good But with the lack of oversight who the hell knows??? Should we take them for their word?

I won't take anyone for their word. But I do consider the DEP to be more trustworthy than most.

Quote:

From what I understand the re-used water is only good for a few uses before it must be treated. It is where it goes from there that is concerning. Does the treated water go back to the companies to re-use or into our water supply? Answer back into our water supply!

Yep. My guess is they use it for about as many wells as are on a single pad (8-12). Once they load it up, it's goin to the treatment plant, either to be injected or treated to remove the impurities (except salt) and released.